Rs. 150-Crore Hexaware Campus For Pune
posted in Outsourcing News and Top Outsourcing deals, Outsourcing to India |Source:www.buiness-standard.com
Hexaware Technologies, the $187.22-million software and BPO company based in Pune is not only planning to set up a Rs. 150-crore campus at Pune’s Hinjewadi IT Park, which is expected to be fully operational by 2009, offering employment to around 3,000-software professionals, but it is also in an expansion mode with plans to acquire an East European software firm specialising in enterprise resource planning (ERP) for up to $40-million, a deal it expects to close by year-end.
Expansion is not restricted to acquisitions alone, and Hexaware’s 27-acre Chennai campus is to be operational by September 2007, while the Pune campus will be ready by March 2009. Rusi Brij, Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer confirms the news saying his firm has acquired 25-acres of land in the third phase of Pune’s Hinjewadi IT Park, and construction work is to start fairly soon. “The company recently built a campus in Chennai with an investment of Rs. 150-crore. The investment in the Hinjewadi facility will be around that mark,” he adds.
As well, he affirmed that Hexaware was in the final stages of negotiating a project to develop an application for postal services of an Asian country, while, refusing to disclose the name of the country.
According to Brij, Hexaware, like many others is planning to take the acquisition route, in a bid to leapfrog its business in USA and Europe, and will target firms that are in the $15-million annual revenue bracket, and with a client base in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space. Hexaware, as per him, has a cash position of around $78-million and won’t require any external funding for the proposed acquisitions.
Last year’s acquisition of Fox Frame, a Mexico-based software firm in November 2006 for $34-million, helped Hexaware to accelerate its software testing business, so much so, the company made $13 million in 2006 in revenues from testing services, which are expected to cross $50-million this year, and income from the segment touched $10-million in the first quarter of 2007.
As well, the company’s Pune centre has been expanding steadily, with a headcount that has risen to 500 from its initial 250-employees, and which is expected to grow by another 350 numbers over the next few months.
The new Pune centre is being set up mainly to focus on its Japan-based clients and for projects dealing in the Java and .Net technology, on top of its ERP system implementation business.
Hexaware plans to expand its ERP services and trave, transport, hotel, logistics, banking and finance services to serve the US and European markets. Currently, the firm has four development centres in India, one each in Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and Gurgaon, including Germany and Mexico. Its Chennai facility that will be operational by September 2008 will, currently seat 3,000-people and will scale up to a 10,000-seater facility, within the next two or three years.
In addition, Hexaware Technologies is extending its Hexa Varsity plans and has already signed an MoU with Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM) for training their students on enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. It has already tied up with Madras University and is looking at more such tie ups, as part of its larger vision for ‘Hexa Varsity‘ says Mr. Brij. Having designed the course which will be available as an elective for third semester students, Hexaware will also provide faculty along with other support to the institute.
There is no doubt, even India’s little IT jump start-me-ups are leapfrogging into the big league, even as they dream of overseas acquisitions that ensure they have come a long way, baby! So much so, all those IIT and engineering graduates MNCs et all queue up to add to their payrolls, are no longer keen to sign on with them, no matter how large the pay packet. The entrepreneurial spirit in them won’t let them add their names to another’s payroll, they would rather spring up a jump-start-me-up firm and have other names on their payroll on home turf, on home ground, in India itself!
That’s the spirit, way to go! After all, it is the Indian youth of today, those that have no understanding of a colonial hangover, those that are all set to conquer the world, those that have ensured India is no longer a hopeful wannabe star, but a major star in its own right, soon to be the Star of the Show!
Go conquer the world, it is your birthright! Show those Babus and politicians sitting in the corridors of power that despite their best efforts to slow India down, India is unstoppable and we who love her more than words can say, will ensure that like the the rest of the world, they too will be conquered, as all Indians are tired off and will no longer tolerate their corrupt shenanigans or crude displays of egotistical power. If, need be there will be a Rang de Basanti , to prevent corrupt Babudom and others from destroying a wonderfully unique country and people, there is none like in the entire world. In the words of Gurcharan Das, it is India Unbound, as is Indian youth!
